yeah, it’s long — I didn’t have time to make it shorter

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I wrote a book chapter!

When I first started at OSU, I was browsing through some composition texts because I knew that part of my job was going involve working closely with the writing program on the beginning composition class. While I was doing that, I came across some descriptions of different writing styles outlined by OSU professor Lisa Ede in her book Work in Progress and immediately recognized myself in her description of the “heavy reviser.”

(Seriously, she could have included my picture)

Reading that really had an impact on me – not that it changed how I write, at all, but it changed how I felt about it. And most of all, it made it easier for me to write collaboratively. Knowing my style as one of many meant knowing what to warn people about – knowing that my willingness to slash and burn through a draft just might freak someone who writes that draft more deliberately than I do the heck out.

So it is especially wonderful that now I have collaborated with Lisa herself. A year-plus ago she told me that she was substantially revising her textbook The Academic Writer, and asked if I would collaborate with her on the research chapter. Chapter 6 and I spent many hours together over the next several months, and I am pretty happy with the results – even if the scope of the whole made it difficult for me to see the forest for all the trees while I was immersed in creation.